Oxford University, UK.
Health (London). 2022 Mar;26(2):181-199. doi: 10.1177/1363459320925866. Epub 2020 Jun 2.
Birth narratives have been found to provide women with the most accessible and often utilised means for giving voice to their exploration of meaning in their births. The stories women tell of their birth come out of their pre- and post-experience bodies, reproducing society through the sharing of cultural meanings. I recruited a selection of 20 birth stories from a popular 'mums' Internet forum in the United Kingdom. Using structural and thematic analyses, I set out to explore how women tell the story of their body in childbirth. This project has contributed evidence to the discussion of women's experiences of subjectivity in the discursive landscape of birth, while uncovering previously unacknowledged sites of resistance. The linguistic restrictions, sustained by the neoliberal control mechanisms on society and the self, act to shape the reality, feelings, and expressions of birthing women. Naming these silencing strategies, as I have done through the findings of this project, and celebrating women's discourse on birth, as the explosion of birth stories across the Internet are doing, offer bold moves to challenge the muting status quo of women in birth. Reclaiming women's language for birth and working to create a new vocabulary encapsulating the experiences of birthing women will also present opportunities for the issue of birth and women's experiences of it to occupy greater political space with a confident and decisive voice.
生育叙事被发现为女性提供了最容易接近和经常使用的方式，让她们能够在生育中探索意义。女性讲述自己生育经历的故事源于她们的身心体验，通过分享文化意义来再现社会。我从英国一个受欢迎的“妈妈”互联网论坛上挑选了 20 个生育故事。通过结构和主题分析，我着手探讨女性如何讲述自己在分娩中的身体故事。这个项目为讨论女性在生育话语中的主体性提供了证据，同时揭示了以前未被承认的抵抗场所。语言限制，由社会和自我的新自由主义控制机制维持，作用于塑造生育女性的现实、感受和表达。通过本项目的研究结果来命名这些使她们沉默的策略，并庆祝互联网上生育故事的爆发，这是对挑战生育中女性沉默现状的大胆举措。为生育重新夺回女性的语言，并努力创造一个新的词汇来概括生育女性的体验，也将为生育问题和女性的生育经历提供机会，以自信和果断的声音在更大的政治空间中占据一席之地。
